A NYT column on the impact of illegal immigrant workers on the economy framed the question as: "To some people, they represent a black-market work force that is lowering the wages of legal immigrants and native-born Americans. To others, they are an essential part of several big industries. What’s the truth?" Well it seems to me that for the first to be true the second would also have to be true. Suppose that illegal immigrants were only a peripheral part of a small number of industries. It would be difficult to make a case that they were having a substantial effect on wages. If illegal immigrants have a big effect on wages, then it must be because they play a large role in the economy. As the article rightly points out, many industries would have to be reorganized if they did not have access to a large flow of immigrant workers. I'm not sure why anyone should care. (Isn't that what happens all the time in a capitalist economy?) Near the end, the article presents an ominous warning from a public policy professor that, without illegal immigrants "over all, the U.S. would be poorer.” That might be true, and those hiring nannies, housecleaners, and garderners would suffer the most. But those who might fill some of these jobs if the wages rose by 50 percent (recognizing that many fewer would be hired), might not care too much that the country as a whole is poorer.
--Dean Baker
